Open Sound System TM

Open Sound System (OSS) is the first attempt in unifying
the digital audio architecture for UNIX. OSS is a set of device drivers
that provide a uniform API across all the major UNIX architectures. It
supports Sound Blaster or Windows Sound System compatible sound cards
which can be plugged into
any UNIX workstation supporting the ISA or PCI bus architecture. OSS also
supports workstations with on-board digital audio hardware.

Traditionally, each UNIX vendor has provided their own API for processing
digital audio. This meant that applications written to a particular UNIX
audio API had to be re-written or ported, with possible loss of functionality,
to another version of UNIX. Applications written to the OSS API, need to
be designed once and then simply re-compiled on any supported UNIX architecture.
OSS is source code compatible across all the platforms.

Most UNIX workstations, thus far, have only provided support for digital
audio sampling and playback (business audio). OSS brings the world of MIDI
and electronic music to the workstation environment. With the advent of
streaming audio, speech recognition/generation, computer telephony, Java
and other multimedia technologies, applications on UNIX can now provide
the same audio capabilities as those found on Windows NT, OS/2, Windows
95 and the Macintosh operating systems. OSS also provides synchronized
audio capabilities required for desktop video and animation playback.